How to get rid of this one !? Microscope and macrophoto views

[leoreefer]

Hi everyone,

I have a big problem with this specie : one photo is worth thousands words. My parameters are : T=24°C ; NO3=4 mg/L ; PO4^3-=undetectable ; pH=8.3 ; Ca2+=420 mg/L ; Mg2+=1400mg/L ; KH = 11°DH

The tank is 50 gallons (200L) with its sump. There are two fishes : one Hemicyanea and one Dascyllus aruanus.

The skimmer is home-made, over-oversized for the tank. I now stop it 1/3 of the time, when it doesn't skim anything. It is equipped with a Tunze Hydrofoamer Silence 9430.040.

About the photos : macroscopically, one can see the algae on the bottle : it seems goldish brown and very tiny. On the other pictures, taken at the output of a microscope (X400), one can see that the superstructures than can be seen with nude eyes are actually full of single cells (greenish at the microscope). On some dynamical views, the inner cells are moving as if they were trying to swim with a flagella. But it also might be the Brownian movement induced by the heat of the light (old tungsten light).

WELL ! If anyone has a solution to get rid of them, even without an accurate identification, I'd be glad, really.

Thank you all for reading,

Leo

[leoreefer]

Hi everyone,

I have a big problem with this specie : one photo is worth thousands words. My parameters are : T=24°C ; NO3=4 mg/L ; PO4^3-=undetectable ; pH=8.3 ; Ca2+=420 mg/L ; Mg2+=1400mg/L ; KH = 11°DH

The tank is 50 gallons (200L) with its sump. There are two fishes : one Hemicyanea and one Dascyllus aruanus.

The skimmer is home-made, over-oversized for the tank. I now stop it 1/3 of the time, when it doesn't skim anything. It is equipped with a Tunze Hydrofoamer Silence 9430.040.

About the photos : macroscopically, one can see the algae on the bottle : it seems goldish brown and very tiny. On the other pictures, taken at the output of a microscope (X400), one can see that the superstructures than can be seen with nude eyes are actually full of single cells (greenish at the microscope). On some dynamical views, the inner cells are moving as if they were trying to swim with a flagella. But it also might be the Brownian movement induced by the heat of the light (old tungsten light).

WELL ! If anyone has a solution to get rid of them, even without an accurate identification, I'd be glad, really.

Thank you all for reading,

Leo

Maybe a simple identification would be useful. I'll adapt the treatment later ! :headwally:

[leoreefer]

Thanks for answering ! Yep, I precisely would like to identify this sh*t ! This one is very common. It makes thin wires or nets, or can grow close to a substrate as on picture 1. In highly-lightened areas, it makes thick layers full of bubbles (02 I guess), which can finally pull a full dread lock out vertically.

[tektite]

It sounds like it behaves like dinoflagellates, though I haven't seen them under a microscope so I can't help there.

[leoreefer]

Thanks. You have some microscope pictures joined ;) ! If you mean dynamic microscopy images, the flagellates are not visible in "clear background" microscopy anyway. But I did mention that a few cells were moving erratically.

I talked with my fish seller and he thinks it is probably dinoflagellates.

So how to get rid of them ;( ? He suggested a high KH and Mg level :/

Any other idea ?

NB : Sorry for my approximative english. I'm french and not very skilled with languages ;)

[leoreefer]

OK, I'm pretty sure I've found the genus of this Dinoflagellate, which is not a newcomer... It's a worldwide killer : Ostreopsis sp. (often ovata species). A lot of infos on the internet and a lot of pictures too, this one beeing really striking (O. siamensis, New Zealand).

They finally killed ALL my hermit crabs, all my snails except the Astrea, and so many other things. I had just a Montipora digitata and a Pachyclavularia sp. in this tank, the Pachy is now dying and the Montipora has trapped a filament of Ostreopsis, making it bleaching within a couple of days, but just locally. I'm praying, still.

However, these killers, that synthetize one of the most powerful non-peptidic poison in the world (palytoxin), are now overwhelmed by pretty, greenish lawny algae. I applied the most recommended solution, which is to raise the KH up to 12/pH up to 8.5 by dosing not too slowly a kalkwasser solution (calcium hydroxyde). I also added sodium bicarbonate frankly directy into the sump, a big spoon each day for one week. NB : just as a reminder, raising the pH is useless if there are not enough CO3²-/HCO3-/H2CO3. The aim of adding HO- in the tank is to push the equilibrium from carbonic acid to carbonates that act as a buffer system...

Hope it helps,

Thx anyway